Teacher Maricel speaks truth to power

The Philippines’ poor get their education from our public school system. How the government regards our public schools is a manifest index of how it respects the poor.

We are overtly familiar with the state of our public schools. Every three years, we go to vote in a public school classroom. The conditions are well known: dismal classrooms that are humid and dilapidated, and, often, wooden boards nailed to the window jambs passing for windows. Desks are hodgepodge because students themselves supply their own desks. This is how we raise the future youth of our country.

Last week, national dailies reported the social media post of Maricel R. Herrera, a licensed professional teacher who showed photos of a comfort room she and her fellow teachers had transformed into a faculty room at Bacoor National High School. Maricel is president of the school’s faculty club. She had intimated in that post that they had spent their own personal funds for that “faculty room.” Now, her job is in peril. The principal has threatened to sue her. Sue her for what? Search me.

How many more principals will now sue their teachers for speaking truth to power? Last June 6, another teacher posted about using the comfort room as a faculty room. The Department of Education (DepEd) secretary had by then reacted that they could have used the laboratory. But this teacher had the proper riposte: there is no laboratory; in fact, students work on the floor for their experiments. My God.

Another daily reported on June 7 about how Araling Panlipunan teachers at F.G. Calderon High School in Hermosa, Tondo, Manila, work on their lesson plans inside another comfort-room-turned-faculty-room.

In fact, we seem to underestimate education. Inquirer had reported photos taken by a netizen on April 25 showing teachers in Abuyog, Leyte, who had to climb mountains to connect to the internet so they could submit school forms and year-end reports. In April last year, the DepEd vowed to provide every school in the country with an internet connection to improve teaching and learning methods. Netizens were quick to heap praises.

One angry netizen, meanwhile, revealed how a public school in a remote Bukidnon village is in need of 12 teachers; it only has four currently. The request for eight more was made over a year ago. The netizen asks: Is that being overly “dramatic”?

The case in a Zamboanga province sounds familiar as Maricel’s: “98 percent of the time we use our personal money to buy equipment. I bought my own laptop, LCD projector, printer, ink. My husband buys them for me.”

But she wants to be quoted anonymously: “DepEd is very top-down. If you quote me, they will determine which division I belong to and my principal will be in hot water.”

By taking offense, the DepEd’s top managers are instead saying that teachers have no right to air legitimate concerns.
In fact, comfort-rooms-turned-faculty-rooms have also been documented by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers in Maligaya High School, Sergio Osmeña High School, Bagong Silangan Elementary School and Quirino High School in Quezon City, Villamor High School and Calderon High School in Manila.

Perhaps they have much to learn from one netizen: “Ang pagsasabi ng katotohanan ay isa na palang krimen ngayon.”

Speaking at the opening of classes last week, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said it would not be easy to raise teachers’ salaries. “It’s not all about money. It is about vocation.” Yes, it is not about money: her salary grade 31 pays her P257,809 a month, while a Teacher 1’s salary grade 11 pays only P20,754.

Editor Joel Pablo Salud wrote on Facebook: “Democracy, to be true to its nature, requires a learned constituency. Democracy is about mature governance. To raise several generations of children intensely aware of their civil rights should cost us more than what we are willing to shell out. Teachers, more than anyone else in this benighted land, are always worth the expense.”

Yet the enormous pork barrel and the President’s intelligence fund get easily approved. Maricel is not the person they need to sue.

On Twitter: @AntonioJMontal2
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